Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Desperate For a Break.

Well, since it's all started early this morning, might as well deal with the insomnia through blogging.

Up early this morning.  The dude left for his small group, and lets be honest, once I'm woken up these days in the early morning, there is no going back to sleep.  I wake up, I lay here trying to go back to sleep, but the nausea comes rushing in, and it's all over.  It's to the point now where the husband has to bring me food to my bed every morning before I can even get up.  If I get up before eating something with protein, it is 100% that I am going to be puking so much by the time I get downstairs that I won't be able to even stomach the kitchen or the fridge to get myself some food.  The funny thing is, if I do eat breakfast, there is still a 98% chance I will be vomiting shortly after, but this time, instead of just puking up white stomach foam, it's full on chunks.  Yuck.  This week, it's a 100% chance no matter what I do, but still, I hold out hope that my man will come back in our room in a half our, and feed the beast.  Something inside me tells me this will make it all better.  Ha!  I'll be naive for now.  His small groups are supposed to last til almost 8, but this season I have made him come home at 7:15 so he can help me get through my morning puke session, and help launder whatever needs to be decontaminated from that mornings upchuck.  I know.  He's a saint.

OF COURSE what's on my mind this morning, besides trying not to vomit of course, is the fact that I am going to have to deal with this monotony for so much longer.

I honestly don't think people who never make it to, or go past their due date understand how lucky they are.  No really.  They don't.  And they shouldn't pretend to understand how hard it is to go 2 weeks past your due date.  Yes, they can try to sympathize, that is fine.  But until you live through going PAST your due date, by any significant length of time, you don't know the torture.

People all around me start popping out their kids, ON THEIR OWN, anywhere from 37 - 39 weeks pregnant.  Why is it that I have to go to at least 41 weeks, 4 WEEKS LONGER than some of these lucky women, to then even get to have the possibility of induction.  Let's be honest.  If they let me, my body would go at least 44 weeks before jumping in and doing something productive, but by that time, I don't even know if the child within would still be alive.

God where in your wisdom to you think it's a good idea for me to keep going in this pregnancy?  I guess it has to be one of those 'unseen' things I'm supposed to focus on.  I never saw the purpose behind you keeping the girls in for so long.  AND, why is it that being patient and waiting on you never seems to work for me in this situation.  After Auryn, when I was induced at just 9 days post due date, I thought maybe I had rushed things, so with Kadence I believed:  I'll just be patient, and wait for God's timing, she'll come on her own.  My body was designed to do this.  It knows what it is doing.  I just have to be patient.  I just have to wait for nature to run its course.  You know what.  That's a load of crap!  I waited and waited and waited, and guess what.  I got to 13 days past my due date, and had NO promising signs of starting labor on my own any time in the next hundred years.  THEN, the poor kid was born HUGE, with long fingernails I had to cut hours after birth, and dried up skin from cooking so long.  Her skin was peeling off in huge THICK layers for weeks after birth.  She was way past done.  What good reason did my body have of holding her in there longer?  What good reason did God have to keep her in there for?  What was the purpose of me waiting and waiting and waiting to have her in 'HIS' time, if 'HIS' time was never, freaking, going to come.

So, at the start of this pregnancy, I made a plan.  Stupid me.  Plans never work.  I held this one alot more openhandedly in the past, but honestly, this plan seemed to be totally plausible.  I decided that I would be induced at 39 weeks.  Really, what is the point of going to 42 weeks if a baby is 'ready' to come out at 39 weeks.  There were many reasons for this plan:  I have a husband who has to work his ass off when I am pregnant because I can't even feed myself alone.  I have two other kiddos to care for, who get severely neglected when I am sick and pregnant.  Reduction in baby weight.  Less tearing.  Less stretch marks.  Planned childcare for my girlies.  Ending to gallbladder symptoms.  Ending to the vomiting.  On and on and on and on.  Saving my mental sanity!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  DUH.  That tops them all!

My doc even thought it was a good idea, and was TOTALLY on board last week.   So WHY OH WHY LORD did she change her freaking mind between then and now.  Why did she not even consider it yesterday?  Oh ya, cause my body is doing NOTHING towards getting this baby out.  NOTHING AT ALL!  Ya, all those contractions that keep my up at night: doing nothing.  All of the 'natural' remedies I've been trying to get him out: nothing.

So now.  I get to puke my way towards 42 weeks, just PRAYING that he will come ALIVE someday before then.  Please Lord keep him alive.

There are TONS of things women have to deal with when they arrive to and pass their due date that those lucky millions don't have to that never make it to their EDD.

Fear is one of them.  Every day, waking up, praying for movement.  Praying that this dang placenta is still working for him.  That is emotional torture.  The chances of still birth are so much higher after 37 weeks, and SO much higher after 40.  It is a really horribly scary thing to have to go through.

And on top of everything else.  Puking for 2 weeks longer than I thought I was going to have to.  Having to be a horrible wife and mom for 2 weeks longer.

Feeling defeated.  Feeling scared.  Feeling sad.  Obviously impatient.  Feeling like I DESPERATELY need a vacation, a mental mommy recharge.  Oh wait, you need money for those things.  Ya, we don't have two nickels to rub together (a whole other lame part to my life right now).  So ya, just stuck here.  In the middle of the desert.  Feeling miserable.  Feeling hopeless.  Just waiting for a baby.

How long?

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Finding MY Happy Heart.

These are the nights of parenthood that I have to die to myself the most, stick a fake smile on my face, and do what is best for the heart's of my kids.

I am tired.  I am frustrated.  I am tired of puking (yes I'm talking about vomiting again, don't you know that's all I do). All I want to do is take a bath, zone out to a show, and go to bed.

But tonight is the annual Harvest Party, that my kids have been counting down to for literally weeks.  So I'm going to go load up on pain pills, reapply the eye makeup I've cried off today, stick a mint in my mouth to hide my vomit breath, a put a huge fake smile on my face, and drive us all down to the dang party, and pretend to have the best night of my entire life.

Why?  Because tonight that is what being a good mommy means.  Choosing my happy heart, and having self control: two things I talk to them about daily.  If I can't do these two things, why should I expect them to?

Again.

Can I seriously not go one morning without puking my guts out?

SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!

Monday, October 29, 2012

Caught In Limbo.

I think my favorite place to barf is hunched over the hard wood floor downstairs, puking onto a clean towel.

I am dead serious.

Places I hate puking the most are into the toilet and/or the sink.  Why?  The SMELL!!!!!  Makes the puking go on and on and on, cause I can never catch my breathe, never catch a scent of something calming.

Yes, this is a freaking nasty, very pathetic blog post.  But this is my life.

I have no words to describe, nor do I want to take the emotional energy to portray what end of pregnancy 'morning' sickness is like.  All I will say is this.  I spend my ENTIRE day trying not to puke, and I fail miserably every single day.

On days like today I ask myself, "Why in the hell would I not be induced ASAP?", "Why continue one more day of this endless torture if I had an option?".

The truth is, I don't really have a good answer.

From the moment I learned of this pregnancy, I thought, "I am going to be induced a week early with this baby, and get an epidural."  This was my plan the ENTIRE pregnancy....until a little less than 2 weeks ago.

All of a sudden I started thinking that I have never had the chance to know what it is like to go into labor on my own, and started getting REALLY sad to think I was never going to know what that was like.  I want an adventure story, even if its not too adventurous.  I want a real labor story.

This is our last pregnancy, our last baby, our last delivery.  I have such picturesque ideals of how the onset of this labor would go.

It'd be on a dreary fall day, slightly chilly outside, with rain coming down.  I would spend some of the day at home, laboring in my room while listening to the rain outside, as my husband packed the car for the hospital, and the girls came in off and on to check on me.  Some of the day would be spent in a bubble bath, just timing contractions, and reading something peaceful, like devotions from my Jesus Calling devotional.  When things became regular and were picking up more I would get dressed in some comfy (but hospital stylish) clothes, have a 'what to expect' chat with our little girlies, and head out to the van.  I would be in the back with some pillows and blankets.  Laboring away.  Driving into town.  In the rain.  Smelling the rain, and listening to it splash up against the sides of the van, and trickle on the windows.  We'd arrive to the hospital before anything got too hectic, and go from there.

Why do I dare write my own labor story?  Simply because I know it doesn't exist.  God has a plan, I keep hearing.  I know this to be true.  I just fear that his plan for me won't include going into labor on my own.

I've researched online, and know, some women's bodies simply do not go into labor on their own while it is still optimally healthy for the baby.  I've seen this in the life of my friend who started labor around 32 weeks, and in my own life with my child that had to be induced at 42 weeks, and was born with lots of post term 'ailments'.  Neither one of these times were optimally healthy for the baby, yet the body did what it did.  I do of course ultimately want what is healthiest for the baby, and I do realize an induction could be the safest thing for sure.  I just wish for another destiny.

I am in the mourning process.  Still holding out hope.  Trying to be realistic.  And realizing those don't go together.  Caught in limbo.  Puking my guts out.


Sunday, October 14, 2012

I'm supposed to be huge, I'm 8 months pregnant. What's your excuse?

For some reason, when women get towards the end of pregnancy, I've noticed that people feel the need to say insensitive things to them, or about them.

This is something I really don't get at all.  Well.....except for the fact that these comments usually come from people who have never experienced the blessing of carrying a child.  So, these remarks come from a very very naive and selfish place.  Or these comments come from men, usually older men.  Again, you don't get it.....

This has happened to me EVERY SINGLE PREGNANCY i've had.  Yet still leaves me scratching my head.  I still don't get it.

I was looking online at just random pregnancy and labor stuff, where women were sharing 'end of pregnancy' stories, and came across a FANTASTIC 'come back' to the 'kind' remarks people LOVE to share with very pregnant women.

A woman was sharing how she was getting just sick of people telling her that she is huge, and so instead of being pissed and bottling it in, she started responding to them.  Her response?

"I'm supposed to be huge, I'm 9 months pregnant.  What's your excuse?"

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

Upon coming across this quote I shared it with my husband, who of course just rolled his eyes.  After begging him to PLEASE let me use this comeback at least once in response to someone's remarks, I finally agreed with him that responding this way isn't necessarily the most mature or kind thing to do.

So to honor my husband's wishes, I will not be using this comeback.  Out loud at least.  I can't promise I won't be thinking this in my head the next time someone shares the obvious with me.

Cause after all, if they ever get to experience the blessing of pregnancy, they'll be huge too.  And I hope the embrace it like a WOMAN!!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Leave Enough Room To Twirl.

The other evening, while at the women's dinner out here at the ranch, I had one of those 'slap you in the face' moments from the Lord.  It was totally divine, and completely awesome.

As you know, we've been restructuring alot of how we do things around the Morrow household in terms of teaching and disciplining our children.  Sadly, this came as the result of doing these two things 'brainless and heartless' for several years, until the light bulb went on and we finally asked the Lord what he would have us do.  Not surprisingly, he started leading us in the opposite direction from which we were presently traveling.  It has been months upon months of praying, listening, experimenting, failing, and succeeding, but we have settled into a routine that feels emotionally and spiritually healthy to our family, and that is a huge blessing.  I never ask myself the question 'Why am I doing this?  I hate this!' while instructing or disciplining the kiddos, and that in itself is entirely freeing.

In the early years, not so long ago, I was just blindly following the crowd around me, even though day to day I was shriveling up inside with conviction and doubt.  I felt like what I was doing was stealing life from my kids, my self, my husband, my family.  I felt like I was trying to put too many firm borders on my family, for no other reason than I felt like I was 'supposed to'.  Not a convicted from the Lord supposed to, but a everyone else is doing this supposed to.  What I say daily in the hearts of my family was devastating.  I felt like my man was stumbling to get his footing and gain respect while trying to settle into our 'family plan', and I saw the hearts of my children starting to loose their child likeness.  They were loosing their girly screams, they were loosing their endless laughter, they were loosing their shiny smiling eyes, and they were becoming restricted.

This was the kicker, when I saw this all happening, that finally freed my heart to look at other options for child training.  I knew what we were doing was stealing life and joy, and not promoting the love of God in our family.  I was inhibiting their child likeness, and I wanted them to experience joy and freedom and innocence and childish fun.  I wanted them to have insanely fun chaotic moments, within safe boundaries and borders.  But, I didn't want them to be so surrounded by these borders that they only concentrated on them.  I only wanted them to recognize these borders when they bumped up against them.  Other than that, I wanted the to be totally free to be them.

The other night at the women's dinner I was talking with a friend about her beautiful back yard and gardens.  They are truly immaculate.  So well planned, so well placed, so well thought out.  This year she added yet another 'bed' to her garden on the edge of her yard, a sort of border if you will.  Once again, a masterpiece.  She was talking about her plants, and her 'beds' and in doing so brought up a conversation that she had had with a young girl out here more recently.  This women had asked the young girl if and where she thought they should add yet another flower bed to her yard, and the girls response:

"Make sure you leave enough room to twirl."

This one simple sentenced slapped me in the face harder than most other things have in my life.  This is what had felt so wrong to me about our 'old ways' of training our children, and this is what feels SO right about this new way of training our children.  We are leaving enough room for them to 'twirl'.  Isn't that just a beautiful image, of a young girl, in a summer dress, on a summer day, in a green lawn, surrounded by beautiful flowers.  Her head is tipped back with her face towards the sky, sun streaming down through her blond hair, her eyes are closed, her arms are out, and she is twirling.

Not a care in the world.

I want to give that to my children.  And I am so extremely satisfied when I do.  The freedom to be innocent, to have not a care in the world.  The freedom to connect with who the Lord made them to be. To feel like a pretty little princess, adored by her King.  To feel confident in who they are as young young women.

I once heard that a goldfish, if alive long enough, will eventually grow to fit the size of the bowl it lives in.  Meaning, stick that goldfish in a tiny little bowl, you're going to always have a tiny little fish.  BUT.....stick that same fish in a huge aquarium, eventually you're going to end up with a healthy size fish.  Why?  This fish has been allowed to develop and grow into who it was made to be.  It was given the freedom to be all that it was meant to be.

Now....back to the little girl.

Lets say this girl is twirling and twirling in this yard, soaking in the sun, her mind off on things even more beautiful than the garden she is in, when all of a sudden the texture of the ground under her bare feet changes from soft green grass, to sharp rough bark chips.  Is this girl gonna keep on twirling?  Maybe.  She might just step once into that bark, in that flower bed, that is a border on that lawn, and be able to quickly remind herself that border in there and move back in to innocent twirling.  But....there is a good chance when she does bump into that border, its going to jolt her into another world.  Her eyes are going to pop open, her feet are going to start burning, and she's going to have to stop twirling in order to deal with the situation at hand.  She has bumped into a border.  She' gonna sit down, and start picking all of those bark dust slivers from her feet.  Her mind in no longer in 'fantasy land' but now in reality.  She's thinking through how she got too close to that border, she's making a plan to avoid this next time, to prolong the twirling.  She's mapping things out in her head, wanting to go back to her 'freedom' but at the same time hoping to stay aware of the 'dangers' at hand.  Once she's finished picking the pokies out of her feet, and finished processing through her new plan, she goes back to the safe center of the yard, surrounded by the borders of beautiful gardens, tilts her head back, and the twirling begins again.  There has been a lesson learned in there, but her freedom remains in tact, and her heart remains in contentment.

This is what I more than anything want to provide for my girls.  A place of freedom and innocence, surrounded by 'beautiful' borders.  Just like the gardener, I want my borders to be well planned, well placed, and thought out.  I want them to create the most unobstructed environment possible in order to insure optimal 'twirling space', but I want them to remain there intact indeed.  I don't want the borders to be the focus, but only the reminder.  I want the twirling to be the focus.  And when a well placed border is bumped into, we will certainly do the work it takes to learn the lesson.  But once the lesson is learned, we will return to the wonderful joy that childhood is as quickly as possible.

After all, childhood is short.  We must leave time for twirling.